Eynsham, Oxfordshire -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/09/2010 -- Grid-Tools Simple Data Masking™ will provide PowerAdvocate with a data masking solution for de-identifying sensitive data for development and product testing.

“We have a lot of fields in our web based solution that are open text, so customers can type whatever they want in there. Some of these fields require data such as plant names, names of customers and site locations. We needed ‘real’ looking, useful data to test these features”, Liz Neiderman, QA Manager for PowerAdvocate, explained.

“The ‘find and replace’ features of the data masking tool were also important for us because we needed to discover specific words or terms, like names for example, and then replace them with another word, leaving the rest of the field completely intact. Grid-Tools Simple Data Masking™ is the only data masking solution we found with this type of functionality. It allows us to keep a lot of our original data, so the data performs as if it were real, without inhibiting the developer’s ability to adequately test the applications.”

Liz’s team were also impressed by the simple interface of the tool, and how easy it was to learn. “As an IT professional and QA Manager with a software development background, I found the tool to be well organized, powerful and incredibly simple. It’s been a relief not to sit behind a complicated UI. I am able to easily see exactly what I am doing to my database, and the use of Excel files is great because I can just fill in the lines for different columns and functions easily.”

“The tool has even more functionality than we expected, and Grid-Tools support keep providing us with new features”, commented Liz. “We’re doing a lot of ‘find and replace’, however, the ability to build our own seed tables which can then be used to randomly populate columns with the look and feel of production data has been incredibly useful to us. Likewise, the application won’t allow us to overwrite columns with any dependencies, so the database integrity is always maintained without even thinking about it.”

When asked about the return on investment PowerAdvocate has achieved from the data masking solution, Liz stated, “When we considered writing the masking scripts ourselves, this probably would have taken us about three to four months of work. I had about 60% masking coverage immediately using Grid-Tools Simple Data Masking™ and I was instantly creating masked data in minutes. What would have taken three to four months of my time took only two weeks of my time.

Liz added, “Grid-Tools Simple Data Masking™ is well worth the cost to the end-customer. If you really know your database and are looking for a powerful tool to quickly de-identify your data with an incredibly nominal effort, it is fantastic. I would definitely recommend this solution to any organization with data masking requirements. It is incredibly powerful, has a great price point, and the Grid-Tools team are very helpful.”

Simple Data Masking™ was officially launched in June 2010 by Grid-Tools Ltd. The data masking solution can be installed as a stand-alone product for small to medium projects, or as part of the Datamaker™ framework. Deploy one universal data masking solution to suit all of your test data management projects; simple.

For more information about Simple Data Masking™, please visit: http://www.grid-tools.com/products/simple_data_masking

For more information contact Grid-Tools at UK: +44 (0) 1865 884 600, USA: 1-866-563-3120 http://www.grid-tools.com or sales@grid-tools.com.

About Grid-Tools Limited
Grid-Tools are specialists in data creation, data masking and test data management. Their experienced personnel have been writing and developing solutions for large companies in both the private and public sectors for nearly 30 years.

The Grid-Tools Datamaker Suite includes a wide range of tools for test data management including such innovative products as Datamaker, a revolutionary tool that creates and publishes quality synthetic test data with the referential integrity of production environments for non-production. Datamaker offers three methods for managing and generating data in testing and development inclusive of database subsetting, data obfuscation (data masking) and synthetic data generation, all of which are included in the Datamaker Professional Edition.

The Grid-Tools methodology consists of using a ‘data-centric’ approach to testing. Their focus is to ensure the quality of the test data you are using is of the right quality for successful testing and development.

Media Contacts:
Jessica Jones
Head of Marketing and PR
Grid-Tools Limited
Tel: +44(0) 1865 884 600
jessica.jones@grid-tools.com